A Bipartisan Civil Rights Legacy

Alan Jenkins

January 04, 2007

Alan Jenkins is executive director of  The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America. His was previously assistant to the solicitor-general at the U.S. Department of Justice, director of human rights at the Ford Foundation, and associate counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

As the nation reflects on the legacy of President Ford, it’s important to remember his leadership in promoting a bipartisan vision for equal opportunity in America. It’s a vision that’s sorely needed today.

As a congressman, Ford voted for the early civil rights bills of the 1950s and for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. As president, he signed an expansion of the Voting Rights Act to cover Americans with limited English skills.

Ford picked civil rights pioneer William Coleman as his Secretary of Transportation—the first African American to hold that post—and gave Coleman authority to throw open the doors of opportunity in the transportation sector, including opening the Coast Guard to women. He also gave women access to the nation’s military academies.

Ford expanded key affirmative action programs and, decades later, when the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policies came before the Supreme Court, he was a vocal defender of their constitutionality and societal importance. In an eloquent New York Times op-ed Ford wrote that eliminating affirmative action at his alma mater would condemn “future college students to suffer the cultural and social impoverishment that afflicted my generation.” Ford, who served in the Navy during WWII, was also instrumental in an important pro-affirmative action amicus brief before the Court signed by prominent retired military officers.

Both Ford and his wife were vocally pro-choice in the White House and after leaving it.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Ford nominated John Paul Stevens, a fellow moderate Republican, to the Supreme Court. For three decades Justice Stevens has been a champion of fairness and equal opportunity. He has voted for robust enforcement of civil rights laws, defended women’s reproductive rights and upheld human rights and humanitarian standards in the face of backsliding by the executive branch.

Mr. Ford’s passing occurs at an important time for his bipartisan, pro-civil rights legacy. The conservative political steamroller clearly stalled in the last election, and its tactics of scapegoating gay people, immigrants and African Americans had less power this time around—notwithstanding mostly successful anti-marriage initiatives and the RNC’s racially and sexually provocative ad against Harold Ford in Tennessee.

While some moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee lost their seats, others like Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins may have greater influence (and greater freedom) in a closely-divided, Democratically-controlled Congress.

At the municipal level, the bipartisan National League of Cities has prioritized combating institutional discrimination and inequality. And the fact that New York’s billionaire Republican mayor is waging the first true war on poverty in decades—albeit through some questionable market-based approaches—is simply extraordinary.

Forward-looking Republicans, Democrats and their constituents can take a number of important steps in the spirit of Gerald Ford’s legacy that will expand opportunity for all and lay a foundation for the next president, whatever her or his party.

President Bush has nominated a series of anti-civil rights federal judges who could dominate the judiciary for a generation. It’s time to shut off that pipeline, and for the Senate to use its "advise and consent" role to approve only candidates with a commitment to protecting Americans’ constitutional rights, including the right to equal protection under the law. Key to this change will be persuading Arlen Specter, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to vote his conscience, as he did when he voted against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court 20 years ago. Constituents of Senator Specter and other moderate Republican senators should voice their support for rigorous confirmation hearings and a message to the President that only candidates who take our civil rights laws seriously should receive a nomination, much less confirmation.

The new Congress will include new anti-choice Democrats like Bob Casey and Heath Shuler, who would deny women’s reproductive rights. But it will also include pro-choice Republicans like Specter, Snowe, Collins and McCain. They and others, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani, will need encouragement from their pro-choice base to make their voices heard and help defend reproductive health and privacy under threat.

Over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has made it much harder for Americans to use our civil rights laws to combat discrimination. A coalition of Democrats and pro-civil rights Republicans must act quickly to restore those rights to everyone in our country. And just as Bush 41 moved from calling the Civil Rights Act of 1991 a “quota bill” to signing it into law, Bush 43 could be shamed into signing the first civil rights act of the 21st century in the face of bipartisan support.

Finally, this year may represent the best opportunity in decades to pass comprehensive immigration reform that protects human rights and offers a pathway to citizenship for newcomers. This is an important racial justice and human rights issue, as well as an economic one, and Republicans like McCain, Jeff Flake and, at times, President Bush, have shown a willingness to work with progressive Democrats towards a just and inclusive vision.

To be sure, the political players and partisan terrain in this area remain complex. Giuliani—though pro-choice and pro-immigration—defended gross police misconduct and showed animosity toward African American civil rights leaders as mayor of New York. McCain is staunchly conservative on a range of social issues that are key to ensuring equal opportunity. And a presidential primary cycle is hardly the ideal time for moderate Republicans to show their stripes—or for Democrats to reach across the aisle. The point is not that the GOP will suddenly become the party of equal opportunity but, rather, that some new openings exist that should not be ignored.

There’s an important difference, moreover, between principled compromise and compromising on our principles. The former can pair strange bedfellows around shared values. The latter can undermine lasting change by pandering to the political winds of the moment.

In conservative circles, Republicans who take equal opportunity seriously are often labeled RINOs—Republicans in Name Only. But the legacy of President Gerald Ford reminds us that the party of Lincoln can stand for something better than Willie Horton ads and their electoral progeny. Those of us who care about equal opportunity must take that opportunity seriously.